Monday, June 16, 2014

Ray Chapman was to have cavorted in the shortfield in yesterday’s Washington-Nap game, but Dr. M.H. Castle, club physician, crossed Manager Birmingham at the last minute. He does not think Chappie will be ready for another week.

In the meantime Ray will spend most of his practice time running backwards. A half dozen players who dropped out of their team lineup because of fractured ankle bones got themselves back in trim by running backwards.

“A player favors an injured leg when he runs forward,” said Lee Fohl, Waterbury manager, who visited [Cleveland team] President Somers Sunday. “When he runs backward he must bear his full weight on the injured limb. It gets sore at first, but the player rapidly rounds into shape.”

Huh. That seems…odd.

Also, I find it interesting that Lee Fohl was visiting Charles Somers in June 1914. When Somers fired manager Joe Birmingham early in the 1915 season, the new Cleveland manager was none other than Lee Fohl. It makes me wonder how long that move was in the works.

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The Game of 6/13/84 featured really good performances from a bunch of pretty old guys - one in particular, who was riding the wave of a magnificent start to the season that was about to come to a screeching halt.

The Game of 6/14/84 gives me the idea to potentially pick a Game of the Day MVP at the end of the year, as it includes yet another huge hit from a guy who has had quite a few of them in the best games of various days so far this season. Also, it was 12-11 in 10 innings, so there's that.

The Game of 6/13/14 was very easily the best in the extremely young career of an uberprospect, including five hits and a homer in extra innings.

The Game of 6/14/14 included two excellent and almost exactly identical batting lines from consecutive hitters in the winning team's lineup - one from a future Hall of Famer and the other from someone who's as good a Cooperstown bet as anyone who hasn't yet met the playing time requirement.

The Game of 6/15/84 maxed out Leverage Index on its last play, which is always a good sign. That play also gave a player who would end up with a 16-year career the highest single-game WPA he would ever have, capping a game in which his team had put either the tying or winning run in scoring position in five consecutive innings.

According to Fangraphs, the Giants had a win probability of as high as 95.0% on Friday, 96.9% on Saturday, and 97.5% yesterday, yet lost all 3 games. I would love to see a stat like this in team game logs; highest chance of winning in a loss and lowest chance in a win. It would then be easy to find games your team should have won, and ones where it made an impressive comeback.